Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema began as one screen in downtown Austin. Tim and Karrie League opened it at 409 Colorado Street on May 24, 1997, as a mom-and-pop repertory house. According to Cinema Treasures, every other row of seats was taken out and replaced with tables, and waiters served food during the movie. The downtown theater closed in the late 2000s and the building became a bar, but the format spread. Alamo became a dine-in chain known for food, cocktails and a no-talking, no-texting rule that The Hollywood Reporter calls the strictest of any U.S. chain, enforced with preshow ads the company pioneered. It also owns and runs Fantastic Fest, a genre film festival in Austin.

The COVID-19 pandemic closed many of its theaters for months. On March 3, 2021, Alamo filed for Chapter 11 in Delaware as part of a deal to sell substantially all its assets to Altamont Capital Partners, a previous investor, affiliates of Fortress Investment Group and Tim League. It then had about 40 locations and its headquarters in Austin. The plan closed the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz in Austin, plus theaters in Kansas City and New Braunfels, and dropped an Orlando project. The sale was completed by June 1, 2021, when the company announced five new theaters, including its first in Manhattan.

On June 12, 2024, Sony Pictures Entertainment bought Alamo from Altamont, Fortress and League. The Hollywood Reporter called it the first time in more than 75 years that a major studio had owned a theater chain, with some exceptions; from 1948 until 2020 the Paramount Consent Decrees had barred studios, under certain conditions, from owning theaters. At the time Alamo described itself as North America's seventh-largest chain, with 35 cinemas in 25 metro areas, more than 10 million guests a year and 4 million loyalty members. CEO Michael Kustermann kept running the chain under a new division, Sony Pictures Experiences, and the headquarters stayed in Austin. Weeks later, after franchisee Two Is One, One Is None, LLC filed for Chapter 7 and shut five Dallas-Fort Worth theaters and one in Minnesota, Alamo bought those six back to reopen them itself.

By January 2025 Alamo ran 44 locations nationwide. In July 2026 Sony announced that Alamo will operate the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument closed since the start of the pandemic, along with the 14-screen former ArcLight next door. The Dome is set to reopen in early 2028.